Detective Gadget
by wasitelves
Summary: Following the fiasco at the pool, a fatal explosion transforms Sherlock Holmes into a cybernetic superhuman.
1. The Explosion

_**AN:** It's been a while, apologies :( Heres hoping I can make it up to you with this crack at fanverse smashing. GO GADGET GO!_

* * *

><p>"Probably my answer has crossed yours."<p>

In one swift motion Sherlock brings the gun around, aiming at the smiling devil with a defiant look in his eyes. The man doesn't even flinch, shoulders fully relaxed and his hands tucked into his neatly pressed Westwood trousers. Perhaps Moriarty thinks he is calling the bluff, or that the bomb is dud. Sherlock is anything but bluffing, with his exasperated flatmate - now poised for his next actions - a hostage just minutes ago. There is only one way to find out the latter.

Without delaying any longer, Sherlock flinches his eyes shut and presses down the trigger. 

* * *

><p>"What in God's name happened here?"<p>

"Call the police immediately!"

"Sherlock? Oh my god, _where the hell are his legs?"_


	2. A Critical Condition

A monophonic tone begins to bleep from the pretty brunette's Blackberry, her thinly plucks brows shooting up in awe. Immediately, she picks herself up from her desk and rushes down the gray corridors as fast as her heels can carry her. By policy, and courtesy, hands were to knock before entering Mycroft Holmes' office door. Though when she did furiously graze her knuckles, there was no answer.

With a huff of impatience, she begins stabbing a number into her phone and puts it to her ear. It takes a number of rings.

_"This is my private number, I hope this is important."_

The woman begins to pace as she speaks, one hand on her hip. "I'm sorry, sir. But I urgently needed to contact you and you weren't in your office."

_"Indeed. What happens to be the problem?"_

"Sir, I've just received word from our hand at the Baker Street street camera. Your brother and his flatmate haven't been home for almost five days, their landlady was approached but she didn't know a thing of use."

_"Yes, I'm aware."_

She stops pacing. "I'm sorry, sir. You're aware?"

_"My brother is in a critical condition at St Thomas'. John Watson had a lucky escape after falling into pool water."_ His voice, though monofied by the phone transmission, saddens. _"It appears curiosity has finally killed the cat."_

"Is there anything I can do?"

A beat. _"Contact our people at the NPL."_

"The laboratory? With respect, Mr Holmes, we agreed that their funding has made them far too adventurous. And they told us not to contact them unless ... "

Her boss interrupts her._ " .. Unless we had them a subject participant."_

"A _willing_ participant, sir."

_"I would rather he hated me for the rest of his life than have it end prematurely."_ These stronger words cease her hinted protesting immediately, dipping her head in compliance though he is not there to see it. He continues. _"Contact them immediately about the GADGET project. That's all."_

There is a click, and the line goes dead. 


	3. Passing of Time

Minutes tick by at a glacial pace, the clock on the sterile hospital wall making slow ticking sounds that begin to grate on John. He had been discharged with mild bruising days ago, it being almost two weeks since the incident took place - and since then he had been returning to the hospital to see if he could hear any whispers about what had happened to Sherlock.

The doctors refused to tell him a thing, many just brushing him off and telling him to go home. It makes him think the worst, it makes him _feel_ the worst. Guilt, for being the one to get off so lightly when he had been the one stupid enough to get himself kidnapped in the first place. Anger, that Sherlock would go behind his back like that. But most of all, there's concern. So much concern.

Again, John is continuing the vigilant routine. Sitting in the reception area, grabbing the shoulders of passing doctors to see if he could get a word out of them. The sky outside begins to darken, and John considers calling it a night - that, until he sees Mycroft walking through the revolving door. Staff in tow.

John jumps up, immediately gaining the attention of a tall, blacksuited man that can only be assumed to be a bodyguard. He takes a step toward John, but Mycroft quickly flags him down and steps forward himself.

"John." Mycroft's brows are high on his forehead, surprised. "What on earth are you doing here?"

"What do you think I'm doing here?" He returns back, evidently irritated. "I'm waiting."

As if confused as to why, Mycroft looks around before focusing back on the pint-sized doctor. "Waiting?"

John begins to entertain the possibility that Mycroft is being infuriating on purpose. "Yes, waiting. Like I have been since I got out. Waiting for someone to tell me what the hell is going on."

There Mycroft gives a quiet, complying sigh. "You won't find him here. He was moved to Richmond upon Thames last week."

"_Last week_? I've been going back-and-forth like an idiot and you're only telling me this now?" He exclaims, then sighs himself. "Look, I'm sorry. I'm just .. tired."

"I'm sorry too, John."

A silence sits, before John asks. "Is he dead?"

"No. Quite the opposite."

"What does that mean?"

Mycroft glances past John into the faraway hospital corridor, seemingly abandoning whatever he had come to the hospital to do and engaging himself into the now. He sends a subtle nod to the suited man that had been obediently stood off-side him, and the man removes a set of car keys from his pocket.

"I think you could come with me, John." He sighs. "We have much to discuss."


	4. Project GADGET

The first thing Sherlock sees are ceiling tiles.

Not hospital ones. They are blackened out from one side, probably to hide whatever camera is looking down on him. This is for surveillance. From where he is lay, he comes to two possibilities - the first, he had somehow survived the explosion and is being carefully monitored, or Moriarty had seized him from the scene and is keeping him like some kind of wounded animal.

Stiffly, Sherlock sits up and looks down upon himself. Hospital gownn heavily bandaged, yet limbs are still perfectly movable (the bandages are therefore to contain surface wounds.) A medley of machinery sits around his bed. Strike that, it is more of an examining table than a bed. Upon looking at the machinery he rules out the hypothesis of being Moriarty's captive - the National Physical Laboratory logo clearly punctured into most of them.

The situation is oddly impractical.

He had been subject to an explosion. Fire, smoke and damagingly loud noise. If not dead, then he should be severely burnt .. or at least have some respiration problems. Yet, when he looks down upon his arms and touches his face, he finds that his skin is perfectly undisturbed. He claps his hands to test the damage to his hearing, the sharp sounds coming in clearly.

Not being able to fully conclude his current situation is irritating to say the least.

When Sherlock decides to remove himself from the bed, he finally finds the damage he has been looking for. Immediately upon standing, he falls down and hits the ground with a sharp slap. His legs, evidently, do not work.

As if summonded by the groan he had emitted, a haggard John suddenly rushes in from the single door arch. The whole room constructed more like a lab than a hospital.

"Sherlock!" He drops down beside him, and Sherlock waits for him to help him up. But, to his surprise, John downright refuses to touch him. "They didn't tell me you were awake."

Sherlock finds that he has to sit himself up. "I've been experimented on."

John is stunned into silence, not knowing what to immediately say. His lip quakes, head hung low. The exact confirmation Sherlock had been looking for. He glances away, though his face remains unchanged - unable to conclude a reaction from the little he knew.

Finally, John speaks. "You were in a bad way, Sherlock. You were in a really bad way. They said - "

"That I would die. Emotional blackmail at it's finest." Sherlock dryly responds. "I'd like to know what they've done. Not what they've said, John."

"They had Mycroft sign all these authorization forms ..."

Before Sherlock can properly express his disgust for anyone giving permission for his brother to make choices in his favour, the man himself is sauntering through the door as irritatingly casual as he usually does. The fact that Sherlock cannot stand and shoo him away only adds to the frustration of not knowing the full facts.

"Ah ah, don't excite yourself." Mycroft says, in a voice that he supposes is soothing but it only seems to make Sherlock's lip curl more. "It's alright, John. You can touch him. Help him back onto the bed."

John obliges, practicing with careful hands and placing Sherlock at the foot of the bed (as the man seemed to stiffen in protest when he tried to lie him back down). "What have you done to my legs?"

"_I _didn't do a thing, Sherlock. You well know that your immobility is down to your actions, that endangered not only you but John as well." Mycroft responds, acknowledging that Sherlock does not react well to such criticisms. He keeps it short. "You will be glad to know that it is only temporary, until the circuits reconnect to your pelvic skeleton."

John continues, standing beside Mycroft and looking gently down at his seated friend. "Sherlock, your legs got blown clean off."

"Unlikely."

Mycroft and John exchange troubled looks, "No, really. One flew in the pool with me and they found the other on the second floor balcony."

"We'll spare you the gory details, brother-mine. But you would have definitely died had it not been for the GADGET program."

The only reason Sherlock had listened as intently as he had, was because he had no choice. Stuck at the end of table/bed, looking up at Mycroft and John with mixed expressions of scorn and numbed down bewilderment. He lowers his head so that he might take an inconspicuous inhale of composure, to which he hears the tiniest of mechanical _whirs_ as his chest lifts.

"What have you done to me?"

At this point, John had turned away with his face in his hands - leaving Mycroft to give the final blow. "Genetic Artificial Devices Grouped with Electronic Transmissions, or 'GADGET', is a highly confidential procedure currently being developed. You are now a sophisticated network of tissue, hardware and software."


	5. Bloody Bizarre

After an intense silence, Sherlock utters a sly laugh. "I think all those years of thinking with your stomach have finally took it's toll."

Mycroft sighs and sidelong glances John. "He thinks we're having him on."

"I absolutely refuse to believe someone could survive that kind of procedure. I mean, look." Sherlock stretches out two white arms, completely unscathed. "Not a scratch. _John_ looks worse off than me."

The named doctor is looking rather lost for what to say, standing with the only injury to show being a black eye from where he had smacked face-first into the pool floor. Normally, if Sherlock did not want to acknowledge something then there was no arguing with him. But .. this bloody bizarre situation. There's no ignoring it.

He tries to compromise, absolutely willing to help if Sherlock actually accepts it. "Look, Sherlock. I saw you, before they did it. You looked like a piece of coal. It's mad to think about, but things could have been so much worse .. "

"There is nothing to think about." Sherlock insists, with quite a forceful glare that demands that no more is to spoken of the matter. Seeing that he is getting nowhere, John shakes his head and sighs -Mycroft, meanwhile, keeping his eyes trained upon his younger brother.

"Go Go Gadget Pen."

The youngest Holmes lifts an impatient look to his brother. "What?"

"It's one of your default devices. Say it: '_Go Go Gadget Pen_'."

"I will not!"

As soon as Sherlock raises his voice, there is a loud whirring (as though someone has turned on an electric whisk) and in a motion so quick it shocks even Mycroft, Sherlock's head flies off his shoulders and crashes through the ceiling - his neck stretched into a metal shaft. The rest of the body is tensed in horror, one can only imagine what the face must look like.

"I suppose it's too late for me to tell him not to lose his head." Mycroft comments to the stunned John, who is standing back with his face craned upward. 


	6. Home

Mere days later, and Sherlock is discharged (with Mycroft promising that he will be dropping in very shortly to deliver him his 'manual'). He had not spoken at all since discovering his newfound cybernetic existance, which made for a very awkward taxi journey home. John flicks a glance or two at Sherlock, who is looking vacantly out of the window.

Looking at him, you'd never be able to tell. Dressed as sharp as a new pin and not a scratch on his skin, which had been artificially 'regrown' as the explosion had took most of it off. His new skin, though the same in appearance, now adaptable to his mechanical limbs. Sherlock had, of course, been sat down many times, teams of doctors and scientists sitting around him and explaining how exactly he works. He would toss his head at certain words, but never nod or speak to show that he fully understands.

"Sherlock." John gently speaks once they are back in the flat. No answer. "Sherlock, come on. You have to talk about this. Noone knows what you're thinking."

The man, finally, graces him with an grumbling mutter while removing his coat."No change there."

"Well?"

"Well what?"

"Well, are we going to talk about this? I mean, Sherlock .. god, it's a huge lifestyle change." John seats himself in his favoured armchair, watching Sherlock who has assumed his brooding post beside the window, looking out with his hands together under his chin. He falls silent again. "And you don't need to keep being moody with everyone. You didn't even say hello to Mrs Hudson when she answered the door."

Silence.

"Sherlock. Please." John pleads, beginning to grow tired now. "If Mycroft didn't let them do it, you _would_ have died. Everything was just burnt and blown off. I mean, god knows I was shocked when he told me. I was outraged - "

"Outraged." Sherlock echoes, cutting him off there and turning sharply away from the window. "I am far from outraged."

It is John's turn to be struck silent. Sherlock continues.

"Don't you see? I have everything I could ever need, built into me. No more diving into B&Q before cases - it's perfect." He edges away from the window, his hands becoming animated with his words. "It isn't a livestyle change, John. It's a lifestyle benefit."

John is stunned, mouth hanging. "So .. you're not angry?"

"Not anymore, no." Sherlock smirks, putting his hands back together. "Admittedly, it took longer than I thought to recover from the initial shock. Two hours at least."

In relief, the doctor exhales and dares emit a tiny chuckle. "I thought you absolutely hated me."

"For a short while, I did. My faith in you was soon restored when I began playing with my new toys."

"You've been .. trying it all out then?"

A darker smirk spreads onto Sherlock's face behind his clapped hands, his clear eyes making a sharp dart to fridge on the far side of the kitchen. Remembering that pot of strawberry yoghurt. "Hungry?"

Before John can answer, he has to duck his head as Sherlock straightens his arm fully out - his hand protracting from his forearm with the metal shaft still in play, acting as a spring to return the hand as quickly as it had gone. Holding a pot of yoghurt.

Elated, truly like a boy with a new toy. Sherlock hands John the pot. "Oh, so you need something to eat it with?" John watches in open mouthed awe as he raised the same hand, ready to duck again - but this time Sherlock's index finger sinks into his hand, a teaspoon emerging from the gap. Eagerly, Sherlock plucks it up and gives it to him. "I'll need that back, once you've washed it. Obviously."

Truly gobsmacked, John can only utter a comment on how amazing that was before tucking into the yoghurt.


	7. The Wrong Bomb

"I should have you skinned, Sebastian. Honestly, confusing the bombs!"

Standing like a teacher scolding a student, Moriarty paces back and forth. Flinging his hands into the air and throwing his arms out in a greatly animated, and angry, speech. "All I asked of you, was to take the pet and strap him into the smoke grenades. Was that_ so_ difficult?"

The brunt of this lecture stands as straight and dignified as he can, knowing not to bother with an apology (as that would likely fuel his rage). In two or three quick strides, his boss gets right in his face. Moriarty's own being severely burnt and blistered on one side - his only injury following the botched explosion. He grabs Sebastian's chin, sneering a final warning. "I don't expect fuck ups like that again, Sebby. Understand?"

Sebastian answers, feeling Moriarty's claws in his cheeks. "I understand, sir."

"Good." He releases the man's fan, his hand still in a claw-like stance even as he becomes that bit more whimsical. "Still, I cannot be too angry with you. You did manage to dispose of Sherlock Holmes, which means I can continue uninterrupted."

Moriarty pauses, the dark sneer still evident in his voice as he touches the cooked side of his face. "And you'd best pray this heals. Now go away until I need you."

With his pride wounded, Sebastian leaves - and as soon as he does, Moriarty seems to sink into a more mournful demeanor. He had always planned to kill Sherlock Holmes, but only after testing the full extent of his brilliant mind. The games had been so much fun, and he knows he will never again encounter someone that he could acknowledge as an equal. _Almost _an equal. Sebastian, though his most trusted staff, had robbed him of his favourite toy.

All because he had strapped Johnny-boy into the wrong bomb.

Out of the blue, Moriarty's mobile begins ringing in the inner pocket of his blazer.


	8. Go Go Gadget!

"I don't want to say it."

"You have to."

"It's stupid. _This_ is stupid."

As promised, Mycroft had returned to Baker Street and delivered his manual. Though it hadn't been a simple textbook as Sherlock had foolishly imagined, 'manual' apparently involving being 'manually' manhandled into a car (after much protest involving shouting and flailing mechanical arms) by a team of his staff.

Sherlock eventually ceased when Mycroft threatened to throw him in a bath and short circuit him. An empty threat, as Sherlock had safely showered that morning - but best not take any chances.

Once calm, or thereabouts, Mycroft had explained that he was taking Sherlock to Teddington - where the lab currently funding the GADGET project required an audience with him. Or rather, they required him to stand in a stupid looking, skintight suit while half of Scotland Yard watched him behind a glass panel. The GADGET project, apparently, had been built with the Yard's improvement in mind.

Sherlock had then gone on to make a comment less that positive about such improvements.

"Say it." Mycroft once again reminds him, the only one behind the panel with him. Sherlock ignores him, sulking in the silly suit and cutting scornful looks to the glass window every now and then. He cannot see through the one-way glass, but he knows someone in there is giggling.

"Why did they send _you_ in for this ridiculous tutoring? It's insulting."

Mycroft turns his eyes up to the ceiling in passive annoyance. "Because I'm the only one here that isn't afraid of you."

"You should be." He responds with his first look of pleasure since arriving.

"And you need to learn how to activate and control your more larger contraptions, Sherlock. Spawning teaspoons and tweezers won't aid you in the long run." Lifting his brows in impatience, Mycroft says for the final time. "Now, you know what to say. Bionic implants are expensive, we need to know that they work properly so that we can develop the necassary updates."

An indiscreet eyeroll, "Nice to know I'm your prototype." Sherlock had been purposely ignoring Mycroft's instructions. With half an hour wasted, and no progress to be had, the older Holmes looks at the clock, sighs and waves a hand to the window. Concluding the session.

Sherlock immediately removes the headflap of the suit, letting his curls riot loose. He seems quite satisfied, as opposed to Lestrade who walks in the side door looking less than pleased. Anderson following in his wake.

"Sherlock, really. Can't you just cooperate?" The DI pleads, the sad little notepad in his hand remaining empty. "All we needed you to say, was 'Go. Go. Gadget' .. and then whatever! We're not asking too much, are we?"

"It'll take a lot more than overpriced cybernetics to improve your squad, Lestrade." Sherlock says rather unkindly, passing a glance over the hanging Anderson. "I'd start by getting rid of your fool on forensics. He only sleeps with your sargeants."

"Oh, you can talk! You're the one that looks like an idiot right now." Anderson snaps from behind Lestrade's shoulder. "Now you're a motor-driven freak."

Not a second later does Mycroft cut in with a loud cough, raising his wristwatch and calmly stating, "This session is quite over. Detective Inspector." He smiles and leads the frustrated man out, the suave utterances of 'apology' and 'uncooperative' following them out. Anderson hangs back, staring at Sherlock in a way that he supposes is meant to knock his confidence. Before muttering another 'freak' comment and beginning to follow them out.

As soon as he turns his back, Sherlock raises his fist and coughs into his other, appearing inconspicuous. "_Go Go Gadget Brass Knuckles_."

His clenched hand flies off, and punches Anderson at the back of the head.


End file.
